What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days?

Welcome back to our weekly survey of the state if Our National Dialogue which is, as you know, what Henry Mancini would have come up with had he composed Goon River.

It was epic, this weekend, the defense of Chris Christie by the people who have an ongoing stake in burnishing the man, the myth, and the legend. To paraphrase a phrase from a unique work of American genius -- To the barricades, men! We're fighting for Big Chicken's honor, which is probably more than he's ever done for it.

Let us begin on Disco Dave's Disco Dance Party, where, after some preliminary throat-clearingfrom the Dancin' Master, and from my man Chuck Todd, someone named Kim Strassel got down to it.

STRASSEL: When you come out and you are that definitive, if anything does surface going forward that suggests that he does know, I mean that's the game-changer in this. Look, I think to what Chuck said, this is not-- I mean this has to be put in perspective, right? Okay, this is not Watergate. This is not even the I.R.S. targeting of last year. In fact-- it's not even, if you think about this as a raw display of political power, it's not even this White House using the sequester and the shutdown to inconvenience millions of Americans, as they did, too, to make a political point.

Now, it is at this point that a kind, intelligent host would point out, gently, to Strassel that she has left the surly bonds of mother Earth and drifted into the far reaches of the wingnutosphere. (The president was responsible for the shutdown?) And that, while she might find that a pleasant spot for peaceful rumination, it isn't fair to drag everyone watching this program on their electric teevees along with her. The Dancin' Master, however, having been presented with an entire goody-bag of arrant bullshit, responded by turning to the mayor of Baltimore, and asking,

GREGORY: But Mayor Blake, you've seen-- you're a politician. You are a mayor. You know as well as anybody that politics ain't beanbag.

The management would like to request at this time that these idiots stop misusing the sainted Mr. Dooley in such a promiscuous fashion. Thank you.

Later, it is true, the Dancin' Master had a bit of a go with obvious anagram Reince Priebus when the latter tried the same routine, tossing Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI! into the mix as well, but Priebus is merely a figurehead leader of an insane political party. He's not a member of the Elect, like Kim Strassel, so the Dancin' Master felt more free to do his job. This is how Mark Halperin has been able to avoid the general ridicule that he has so richly deserved for the last 20 years, but, say, Gary Hart, can't get arrested on these showz. It is very weird.

But the real piece de resistance was to be found over on ABC, where old pal Martha Raddatz, sitting in for The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs, hosted forgotten American hero Rudy Giuliani, who was quick to demonstrate the mad political and reasoning skillz that made him the same kind of frontrunner at this point in the 2008 presidential cycle that Big Chicken was until about a week ago.

GIULIANI: You know, Martha, that's always kind of simplistic after some like this happens, you know, how could it happen, how could you not have known? How did President Obama not know about the IRS targeting right wing groups? You know, massive numbers of right wing groups...

RADDATZ: But this is traffic, this affects everybody. This seems very different.

Yes, it does, Martha. Also, it seems very different because, you know, the bridge closing actually happened. The IRS "targeting of massive numbers of right wing groups" did not. This seems an important point. M'sieu 9-11 pressed on.

GIULIANI: Well, that affects a lot of people. And the reality is, things go wrong in an administration. And frankly, you know, he was in campaign-mode at the time, during campaign-mode you miss a lot of things. You're not paying as much attention. We see that with Benghazi.

Bzzzzzt! Sorry, but thank you for playing. Apparently, Rudy's subscription to The New York Times has lapsed. Besides, doesn't he know that the president let those people die in Libya to protect the gun-running he was personally doing to Syria? Try to keep up, Rudy.

I'll give you plenty of examples. Every administration, every president, every mayor, every governor, something goes wrong below them and then the press ask, gosh, how do they not know? How did they not realize? The reality is, he says he didn't realize. He says he didn't know. I think it's pretty darn credible. He wouldn't make this blanket denial unless it's not true.

I'm sure that, back when Rudy was a U.S. Attorney, that was the principle under which he prosecuted people, that if the defendant issued "a blanket denial," then it must be true and everyone could go to lunch.

GIULIANI: But this is what happens in political operations. I mean, people get wrong messages. It happens all the time. It happened, again, I go back to the IRS scandal. The people in the IRS thought President Obama wanted them to do this. President Obama didn't want them to do this. But they got the sense because of that culture that they were supposed to target right wing groups. It was totally wrong. I think it was totally wrong for these people to have interpreted Chris Christie this way.

Again, one of these things actually happened, and one didn't. This is a distinction that should be important but, strangely, is not.

Finally, on CBS, former Plantagenet racing handicapper Bob Schieffer hosted an odd lot of folks, primary among whom was Senator Marco Rubio, onetime rising Republican star and noted stepper-upon-rakes. Rubio's running around now pretending to be a conservative who cares about poor people -- this is the latest scam from the boys down in the Rebranding Lab -- and so declined comment on the travails of Big Chicken. However, he would like you to know that the only thing keeping people in poverty down is a staggering dearth of effective empty rhetoric, and the failure of the American people to recognize the essential genius of the notion of handing gobs of free federal money over to the likes of Rick Scott down in Florida.

SCHIEFFER: Well, you are not saying that program that Head Start were a failure because I took that from your speech that that is what you were saying, is that what you meant?

RUBIO: Well, that's not what my speech said.

Because Head Start is very popular, because it works, and even I am not blind enough to step on that rake.

Actually, I think programs like Head Start are geared in the right direction in the sense that they're trying to get children educational opportunities as young as possible. I think where those programs can be completed and improved is that we create flexibility in them at the local level. So, I'm not saying we should dismantle the efforts, I'm saying that these efforts need to be reformed and I believe the best way to reform them is to turn the money and the influence over to the state and local level where I think you'll find the kinds of innovations that allow us to confront an issue that is complex, and quite frankly diverse. For example, rural poverty looks different than urban poverty.

How does it "look different"? Oooh, oooh, call on me. I know!

Elsewhere on the show, we were inches away from a clean getaway from Bad Analogy Theater on the Big Chicken front, when John Harris of Tiger Beat On The Potomac jumped in to Win The Morning (!)

HARRIS: You've got H.R. Haldeman meets Jim Carrey. And it's just -- it's vastly entertaining. The other thing I would -- I've noticed, there was a comment in The Washington Post today by Kathleen Parker, and I picked up the same thing. A lot of conservatives who Chris Christie really needs to court because frankly he's seen as a more moderate Republican, they don't seem as bothered by this. I've noticed it in my email and my conversations as well. They think there's hypocrisy on the part of the media that this is a lesser scandal than, say, the IRS investigations. And so like when the media goes in to full frenzy mode, actually Republicans and conservatives tend to rally around the target.

To the barricades, men!

Charles P. PierceCharles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.